Moment of
Silence -- Emmanuel Ortiz
Emmanuel Ortiz is a Chicano (native born Mexican), a Puerto Rican, an
Irish American.. but foremost an activist and a spoken-word poet. works
with the Minnesota Alliance for the Indigenous Zapatistas (MAIZ) and Estación
Libre. He is a staff member of the Resource Centre of the Americas, the
non-profit publisher ofamericas.org. I've been reading his poems lately and I'm
putting up one of his poem here, sans comments.
The
wikipedia entry has the following to say about this poem...
"Moment
of Silence is a controversial poem by Emmanuel Ortiz published on September 11,
2002, the first anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks. The poem links
the history of colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, the War on Terror,
environmental racism, and structural violence to the attacks.
The poem
goes on to critique the notion of a moment of silence, perhaps best summed up
by the lines: "From somewhere within the pillars of power, you open your
mouth to invoke a moment of our silence and we are all left speechless"
and "This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written."
The majority of the poem serves as a list of historical crimes by the West
against indigenous peoples or the Third World and how the structures which
perpetuate those crimes slip through the cracks whenever people take a
"moment of silence". Essentially, Ortiz believes a moment of silence
"cut[s] in line" by failing to acknowledge previous and ongoing forms
of structural violence."
Before I Start This Poem
Before I start this
poem,
I'd like to ask you
to join me
in a moment of
silence
in honour of those
who died
in the World Trade
Centre
and the Pentagon
last September 11th.
I would also like to
ask you
a moment of silence
for all of those who
have been
harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared,
tortured, raped, or
killed
in retaliation for
those strikes,
for the victims in
both
Afghanistan and the
U.S.
And if I could just
add one more thing...
A full day of silence
for the tens of
thousands of Palestinians
who have died at the
hands of
U.S.-backed Israeli
forces
over decades of
occupation.
Six months of silence
for the million
and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who
have died of
malnourishment or
starvation
as a result of an
11-year U.S. embargo
against the country.
Before I begin this
poem:
two months of silence
for the Blacks under
Apartheid
in South Africa,
where homeland
security
made them aliens
in their own country.
Nine months of
silence
for the dead in
Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, where
death rained
down and peeled back
every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
and the survivors
went on as if alive.
A year of silence
for the millions of
dead
in Vietnam--a people,
not a war-
for those who know a
thing or two
about the scent of
burning fuel,
their relatives'
bones buried in it,
their babies born of
it.
A year of silence
for the dead in
Cambodia and Laos,
victims of a secret
war ... ssssshhhhh ....
Say nothing ... we
don't want them to learn
that they are dead.
Two months of silence
for the decades of
dead
in Colombia, whose
names,
like the corpses they
once represented,
have piled up and
slipped off
our tongues.
Before I begin this
poem,
An hour of silence
for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of
silence
for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence
for the Guetmaltecos
...
None of whom ever
knew
a moment of peace
45 seconds of silence
for the 45 dead
at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence
for the hundred
million Africans
who found their
graves
far deeper in the
ocean
than any building
could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA
testing
or dental records
to identify their
remains.
And for those who
were
strung and swung
from the heights of
sycamore trees
in the south, the
north,
the east, and the
west...
100 years of
silence...
For the hundreds of
millions of
indigenous peoples
from this half of
right here,
Whose land and lives were
stolen,
In postcard-perfect
plots
like Pine Ridge,
Wounded Knee,
Sand Creek, Fallen
Timbers,
or the Trail of
Tears.
Names now reduced
to innocuous magnetic
poetry
on the refrigerator
of our consciousness
...
So you want a moment
of silence?
And we are all left
speechless
Our tongues snatched
from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have
all been laid to rest
The drums
disintegrating into dust
Before I begin this
poem,
You want a moment of
silence
You mourn now as if
the world will never be the
same
And the rest of us
hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always
has been
Because this is not a
9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about
what causes poems like
this
to be written
And if this is a 9/11
poem, then
This is a September
11th poem
for Chile, 1971
This is a September
12th poem
for Steven Biko in
South Africa, 1977
This is a September
13th poem
for the brothers at
Attica Prison,
New Yor k, 1971.
This is a September
14th poem
for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem
for every date that
falls
to the ground in
ashes
This is a poem for
the 110 stories
that were never told
The 110 stories that
history
chose not to write in
textbooks
The 110 stories that
CNN, BBC,
The New York Times,
and Newsweek ignored
This is a poem
for interrupting this
program.
And still you want
a moment of silence
for your dead?
We could give you
lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees
and histories
The dead stares on
the faces
of nameless children
Before I start this
poem
We could be silent
forever
Or just long enough
to hunger,
For the dust to bury
us
And you would still
ask us
For more of our
silence.
If you want a moment
of silence
Then stop the oil
pumps
Turn off the engines
and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock
markets
Unplug the marquee
lights,
Delete the instant
messages,
Derail the trains,
the light rail transit
If you want a moment
of silence,
put a brick through
the window of Taco
Bell,
And pay the workers
for wages lost
Tear down the liquor
stores,
The townhouses, the
White Houses,
the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and
the Playboys.
If you want a moment
of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13
hour sale
Or the next time your
white guilt
fills the room where
my beautiful
people have gathered
You want a moment of
silence
Then take it
& nbsp; Now,
Before this poem
begins.
Here, in the echo of
my voice,
In the pause between
goosesteps of the second
hand
In the space
between bodies in
embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all
Don't cut in line.
Let your silence
begin
at the beginning of
crime But we,
Tonight we will keep
right on singing
For our dead.
"A time has come
when silence is betrayal. That time is now."
xoxo
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